Will FlowArts.io Change Everything? by Drex Factor

Hey Drex, Thanks so much for making this video. It was actually meant to be a sneaky soft launch but I guess now it's not :) So some background. In September 2024 Nick messaged me to ask if I had any ideas about a better way to host his course than Udemy and of course I've been thinking about doing the next spherculism website for years and coincidentally was just at a point in my life where I could seriously consider it. Me and Nick are co-founders, it didn't make sense for it to be either sperculism or playpoi so flowarts.io was born. But we both inspired one another to get back into it, me building a new site and Nick getting back in front of the camera and teaching. The site as it is now is maybe 4 weeks of dev time, so it's very rough and in its infancy.

I definitely have nostalgia for the old web. I've been learning dragon staff (shout out to the unbelievably epic new flowtoys pop n flow Dragon Staff) and I find it so hard to find any curated content online. You basically have to know the right people to follow on instagram to find the content you want. But they like you say the conversations don't tend to be very deep. I totally understand that I might just be well out of the loop on where to hangout online but it's certainly validating to hear you talk about this too.

So Nick currently sells that course for around 75-100 usd and it's really great. About 12 hours of content across I think 180 videos. Goes into heaps of detail about topics like how to not damage your knees on various ground surfaces and stuff. It is a really comprehensive course and would give anyone a great foundation. So I really wanted to get away from that one off payment model, I've done it a few times for learning music production and I just know we can do better and nurture a more supportive community. So Nick and I discussed it and decided on 20 usd a month or 160 usd for the year. We'll add other payment tiers once there's more features.

Currently that's for 1 poi course. But we're going to add Nick's intermediate/advanced course as well, which is another 12 hours or so. Then stan_the_flow_nomad and nixie.flow are creating 4 new courses which will be exclusive on the site. Stan's producing a contact staff and dragon staff course. Nikki is producing a Ropedart course and a Tech Fans course. So there'll be 6 courses by the end of the year. There might also be a fire safety course. Plus there'll be whatever old content I remaster and new content I produce. Plus Nikki and stan will be travelling around europe and making various event videos, performances, interviews, and so on. I'm also planning to twist Drew's arm into making a multi ball contact course ;)

All of those courses and other content will still only be $20 a month, the idea being that anyone can cancel one streaming service and do this instead. It will be a huge amount of top quality content, for a very affordable price.

Regarding the splitting of money, most of it goes to the teachers, 70%, then the remainder gets split 50:50 between flowarts and me as a developer. The flowarts money itself will be spent on hosting, marketing, etc and anything left over will go towards things like competition prizes or events in the future. The dev money for me is mostly a token gesture so I'm not just working for free and maybe after a few years will pay off the dev costs and become passive income. Whilst Nick is the only teacher he'll get all of the teacher money, once other teachers come on board the pool will be shared. This is a stark contrast to Udemy for example which sometimes took 70% of the payment for nick's course.
For Nikki's travels we designed and produced some gorgeous practice fans. So there will be some products available too, which of course will be discounted if you're on the course.

Currently the entire project is self funded, both in time and money by me. I did the same for spherculism, it was always free, no ads, nothing. Ultimately that's just not sustainable. The sphercular vision dvd made a loss and actually back then the plan was for it to be a digital release and then the 2nd phase would be to teach all the things in the dvd. Flowarts.io is kind of that second phase which never happened.

We had this course sitting there and the payment system all set up so we figured we'd just soft launch the site and get a few people onto the course. I was super surprised to see 70 people sign up and not subscribe. You're absolutely right that there's currently very little to do, since the main point of the first version of the site is to subscribe to Nick's course. However there will be heaps of stuff for free. Come over and chat in the forums about what you want and I'll work through the list, I'm happy to build anything we want.

Also we're building it all for beginners to start with but will have heaps of features for intermediates, professionals and troupes etc. It just all takes time.

Will it change everything or just fizzle out? That's totally up to the community. I'm hoping people will invest in this vision and if people put their faith in me then I'll absolutely smash it.

So come and sign up. Come chat in the forums, introduce yourselves and let's build a community again and decide together which way we want to take it.